In the end, it was a rather steamy encounter between Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Sonay Kartal with constant momentum shifts. The match involved a rather shocking incident that caught the eyes of the tennis world. In the Wimbledon round of 16 encounter between the two, a major technological failure gifted a game to the local star Kartal. Although she hit the ball long, the call wasn’t made due to a glitch. This raised many eyebrows, with Kartal giving her first reaction to this controversy.

During the post-match press conference, Kartal was asked to comment on the line-call controversy that went against her opponent. She revealed, “That situation is a rarity. I don’t think it’s really ever happened, if it has. What can you do? The umpire’s trying his best in that situation. I think he handled it fine. I think the system just malfunctioned a little bit and I think the fairest way was what he did, to replay the point. I think obviously it was just a bit unlucky that happened. But I think it’s… there’s hardly been any of them.”

Subsequently, the interviewer asked her if she felt that her backhand was out. Replying to this, Sonay Kartal added, “It’s unfortunate for me. I’m quite short. So where the net tape is, a lot of the time I lose my vision so I can’t look over the baseline. But from where I was, I couldn’t see. From my point, I felt like I hit the backhand clean. Maybe I have to look at the replay. My vision was kind of blinded. When the point stopped, I didn’t really know what was… I thought maybe it was a let or something came on the court. I couldn’t see.”

However, the interviewer went on to question Kartal if she should’ve surrendered the game if she felt that her return was long. “If I could typically see, like, it was massively out, then you can’t argue with that. But if it’s tight, there’s not much I can do in that situation,” Kartal said, as she felt that it wasn’t a clear-cut call.

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The incident occurred in the first set when Pavlyuchenkova was serving at advantage at 4-4. Although Sonay Kartal’s return was long, the call wasn’t made quiet right, and Kartal was gifted the point. This left Pavlyuchenkova frustrated and she eventually went on to lose that game.

The play was even halted, with the Russian star complaining to the chair umpire, Nico Helwerth, “I don’t know if it’s in or it’s out. How do I know? How can you prove it? Because she is local, they can say whatever. You took the game away from me… They stole a game from me. They stole it.”

Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time that such an incident has happened at this year’s Wimbledon Championships. Even local star Emma Raducanu questioned the technology at Wimbledon.

Not just Sonay Kartal… Emma Raducanu comes down hard on electronic line-calling system

With Wimbledon replacing the line judges with technology at this year’s edition, the motto was to reduce errors in decision-making, ensuring unbiased play. However, with the latest set of failures in this system, many players have questioned whether this technology is actually efficient. Even Emma Raducanu doubted this after her exit from Wimbledon in the third round against Aryna Sabalenka.

She revealed, “That call was for sure out. It’s kind of disappointing that the calls can be so wrong, but for the most part they’ve been OK. I’ve had a few in my other matches, too, that have been very wrong. Hopefully they can fix that.”

Apart from Raducanu, other players like Jack Draper and Belinda Bencic have also questioned the efficiency of this technology. It is high time that Wimbledon found a permanent fix to these technological issues so that such blunders are avoided in the future. Do you think that Wimbledon should go back to the line judges after technological failures in the line-calling system? Let us know your views in the comments below.